The Man in the High Castle

Pedigree: Best in show. Ridley Scott and X Files man Frank Spotnitz are executive producers (Spotnitz also wrote the screenplay), and David W Zucker (The Good Wife) is also involved.

Is it any good? The Man in the High Castle features a few of the typical pilot wobbles – an overreliance on exposition, a slight willingness to prioritise the cramming in of plot details over character development – but its grand vision and murky, stylised tone more than make up for it. What’s more, this sort of drama feels genuinely new: beyond the odd episode of Doctor Who and Quantum Leap, speculative alternate histories are rarely told on TV. Bonus points for an excellent final few minutes, which raises anticipation for a full series significantly.

Will it get a series? It would be a surprise if it didn’t. It’s easily the most confident and coherent of this batch of pilots and, crucially, is killing it in customer response: it currently has an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars.

New Yorker Presents

Premise:The New Yorker in TV form, featuring a short story, an interview, a documentary, a poem and some rather nifty time-lapse footage of the magazine’s famous cartoons being made.

Pedigree: Well, it’s the New Yorker. Though if that’s somehow not enough for you, it’s exec-produced by Alex Gibney, the documentary segment is overseen by Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme, the short story is penned by Simon Rich and it features appearances from Alan Cumming, Marina Abramovic and Andrew Garfield.

Is it any good? In patches. It looks great. The documentary profile, on the work of biologist Tyrone Hayes, manages to artfully convey the work of its subject despite its brief running time, and the dramatisation of the short story gets across Rich’s wry, Thurber-ish style. The interview segment, on Abramovic, doesn’t provide much that fans of the performance artist won’t know already, but is a decent introduction for newcomers. It’s only the poem, performed by a wild, hirsute Garfield, that feels like a complete misstep.

Generally, the tone’s a little closer to the chatty informality of something like This American Life than the New Yorker’s austere authoritativeness (you suspect that a straight approximation of the latter wouldn’t transfer terribly well to television) but is informative enough.

Will it get a series? Difficult to call. It might do a Transparent, which didn’t get a great viewer response, but which Amazon decided was of high enough quality to make anyway.

Salem Rogers

Salem Rogers: not razor sharp. Photograph: Amazon Studios

Premise: Comedy in which a hell-raising ex-model tries to get back in the industry, reluctantly aided by her put-upon former assistant.

Is it any good? It’s not terrible: Bibb has a lot of fun as Rogers, cursing, burping and generally offending anyone she comes into contact with, and Dratch is a safe pair of hands as her beleaguered pal. That said, the subject matter – models, narcissism, self-help et al – already seems tired by the end of this 30-minute pilot, and Rogers’s acerbic one-liners aren’t quite razor-sharp enough to live up to her monsterish billing.

Will it get a series? Possibly, although Amazon may feel they have enough half-hour comedies – Transparent, Alpha House, Red Oaks – for the time being.

Down Dog

Down Dog: can a yoga show prove a hit? Photograph: Amazon Studios

Premise: A handsome beach bum, whose good looks and permanently baked demeanour have allowed him to sail through life, finally gets a dose of reality when his girlfriend breaks up with him, leaving him in sole charge of their yoga studio.

Pedigree: Robin Schiff (Romy And Michelle’s High School Reunion) wrote the script. Kris Kristofferson has a minor role as the protagonist’s weed-dealing dad.

Is it any good? Listen, there are plenty of fine understated comedy-dramas about at the moment – Togetherness, Transparent and Looking, to name three. But even compared to those, Down Dog seems remarkably low-key. Its stakes are so small as to be practically nonexistent: its main point of conflict is the running of a yoga studio, for crying out loud. That said, there is something something agreeable about its airy, unhurried tone, which wafts over you like a breeze on Venice Beach, maaaan.

Will it get a series? Unlikely.

Mad Dogs

Premise: Four over-the-hill fortysomethings gather in Belize to toast the retirement of their mutual buddy, and find themselves drawn into a sequence of violent and bizarre events. It’s a remake of the British comedy-drama of the same name.

Pedigree: It’s exec-produced by Shawn Ryan of The Shield fame, alongside the creator of the original, Chris Cole. Its cast is made up of Billy Zane, Steve Zahn, Michael Imperioli, Romany Malco and Ben Chaplin (who also appeared in the original).

Is it any good? “Rather than building menace, the snail-like pace dissipated it,” the Guardian’s John Crace wrote of the first episode of the original Mad Dogs, though he could easily have been talking about this remake. For much of its first hour, Mad Dogs US seems overly preoccupied with underlining the tension between its leads in thick marker pen, making it seem less like a high-octane thriller and more like a sulky stag night. Still, the cast Ryan and Cole have assembled have a watchable, scratchy chemistry and the final 15 minutes see the pace ratcheted up several notches. Its ending in particular sets things up very nicely for a full series.

Will it get a series? It has a fair chance, given its cast, source material and the presence of Ryan, a master of edge-of-your-seat television.

Cocked

Cock-up: Jason Lee in Cocked. Photograph: Amazon Studios

Premise: A mild-mannered management consultant is forced to return to the fold of his estranged gun-manufacturing family after a rival company, run by his uncle, threatens to destroy them.

Pedigree: It’s been created by Lie to Me showrunner Samuel Baum, with Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings of Summer) directing. Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl) and Sam Trammell (True Blood) play the brothers.

Is it any good? Not really. The subject matter – American gun culture – has scope, but there’s little in this pilot to suggest Cocked is terribly keen on instigating a debate on that topic. Instead, it plays out as a gentler, goofier Sons of Anarchy, with a fractured, foul-mouthed family at its centre. Which is fine, but the problem is that there’s not anything especially revelatory here: the cast of characters – the gruff patriarch, the diametrically opposed brothers – all feel very tired, and its dialogue sags rather than snaps.

Will it get a series? Possibly, though The Man in the High Castle and Mad Dogs both look better bets.

Point of Honor

Premise: Civil war-era drama in which a wealthy Virginia family allies itself with the Confederate cause while simultaneously freeing all of its own slaves, a concept which – as lots of people have pointed out – seems to have next to no historical basis at all.

Pedigree: It’s created by Randall Wallace, director of Secretariat, and Carlton Cuse, whose seems to have a hand in pretty much every (bad) show on TV at the moment.

Is it any good? Most certifiably not. Granted, someone’s thrown enough money at the thing to give the cinematography a glossy sheen, but the concept is so ridiculously wrongheaded that you will spend much of the running time banging your skull against the nearest wall in frustration to notice. Why is this family decrying slavery while fighting for the right to keep slaves? It’s a question that Point of Honor seems entirely unwilling or unable to answer in its first hour. Also, as this excellent Atlantic piece points out, there’s a slightly uneasy “white saviour” theme throughout, best exemplified by a genuinely ghastly scene where the family tell the slaves that they’re letting them go, everybody starts hugging and, quick as a flash, one of the freed women starts singing Amazing Grace.